A mile north of campus lies 400 acres of forests and streams, stretches of public land filled with hickories, flowering dogwood, and boulders. 75 of these acres constitute the Billy Johnson Mountain Lakes Preserve, which is only partially a misnomer: the relativity flat woodlands encircle a lake banked by beaver dams and blueberry bushes.
The Mountain Lakes Preserve requires thoughtful upkeep to manage its miles of trails and stave off invasive species. Friends of Princeton Open Spaces (FOPOS), a non-profit founded in 1969 that acquires local land for preservation purposes, does this work year-round.
“Places like this sustain humans emotionally,” Wendy Mager, President of FOPOS, told The Daily Princetonian. She wore a puffer jacket, looking across a grassy lawn to the preserve’s titular lake and the autumn landscape beyond it.
“And of course, a healthy ecosystem is what has sustained humans all these years on this planet,” she added. But well-managed land benefits humans today, even those who never visit. The ecosystem services provided by such spaces include natural cooling effects and flood prevention.
Mountain Lake was created artificially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through multiple damming efforts, initially for the purpose of ice production in an era before widespread refrigeration. Edgar Palmer, Class of 1903, acquired the surrounding land in 1929 and let the public take part in its recreation.
“He let townspeople come swim, skate, and fish in the lake,” Mager said. In the late ’50s, a family purchased the land and built an elegant white house overlooking the water. It was designed by Rolf W. Bauhan, who built hundreds of homes in the area and helped establish the University’s School of Architecture.
In a strange bit of Princeton lore, the house briefly belonged to the Menéndez family, whose sons Lyle and Erik murdered their millionaire parents in 1989 in a case that made national news. Lyle Menéndez attended Princeton University before being incarcerated. After the murders, Lyle bought Chuck’s Spring Street Café in town.
When the land around Mountain Lake was set for development in the late 1980s by one of the country’s largest architectural firms, philanthropist Betty Wold Johnson stepped in to save it. Because of her help, the preserve was named after her late son, Billy Johnson.
Ever since, FOPOS has taken care of the land on behalf of the city. In recent years, there has been a heightened need for the active management of Mountain Lakes and other nature preserves as invasive species replace native ones. For instance, wineberry shrubs, an invasive species, produce new reproductive canes without pollen every year, making proactive efforts to prevent the spread of such plants essential. To combat the wineberry shrubs, FOPOS held a wineberry foraging event in the fall, where participants uprooted the invasive species from the preserve and received jam recipes for their spoils.
The large deer in the area worsen the problem, helping invasive species thrive by munching solely on the native plants they have evolved to eat. Deer have no natural predators in the region, and a fragmented suburban habitat funnels them into limited natural spaces. As a result, their numbers are higher than can be supported in Princeton. But culling practices in recent years, including contracts for sharpshooters and volunteer bow hunters, have led to some pushback, according to Mager.
“I tell people it’s difficult to cull deer, but if you don’t, the deer are killing other animals; you have to in order to keep the ecosystem healthy. Or ultimately the deer will starve too. Ecosystems are about balance,” Mager said.
To protect native tree saplings in Mountain Lakes from hungry deer, FOPOS cages them until they are above five feet tall. FOPOS has also built a large enclosure fence around 18 acres of the site to allow the forest’s native plants to grow uninhibited.
Shoreline restoration is similarly underway on the 25 acres surrounding the lake. Like deer, beavers have a particular taste for native plants when picking wood for their dams.
“We need to persuade the beaver population to eat nasty invasive shrubs. They haven’t evolved to think of them as food or building material,” Mager said.
“If only we could get them to change their views,” she continued. “Someone in the EEB [Ecology and Evolutionary Biology] department should figure that out.”
For now, FOPOS has taken to some creative methods to persuade the beavers away from native shrubs, including painting tree trunks to make them taste grittier.
In addition to domination by invasive species, Mountain Lakes is struggling with a thinning canopy. The Emerald Ash Borer, a jewel beetle most likely brought from Asia as a result of human activity, has spread across much of North America, burrowing into ash trees and killing them.
Anna Corichi, Director of Natural Resources and Stewardship at FOPOS, sat next to Wendy as they discussed the non-profit’s restoration efforts. She pointed across the lake at a sea of leafless branches, a little too naked for late October.
“They shouldn’t be so bare. We’re losing huge portions of the canopy,” Corichi said. Princeton has lost thousands of ash trees in recent years. On campus, a handful that used to frame Cannon Green were replaced by white oaks.
The following week, she led a group of volunteers to a small grove of carefully preserved American chestnut trees, another once-ubiquitous species nearly wiped out by blight in the 20th century. As the group trudged around the lake and past the beaver dams, they switched between talk of historical and ongoing losses, pointing upwards at dying ashes.
“Almost all of the ash trees are expected to die,” Corichi said. “It’s a huge carbon bank loss.”
FOPOS will soon receive assistance from the township to cut down some of the dead trees that are scattered across Mountain Lakes.
“We’re replacing them with oaks and hickories and such, setting the stage for future forests,” Corichi said.
FOPOS has increased its management efforts in response to the various strains on the Mountain Lakes ecosystem.
“When we got the land in 1987, the invasive problem here and elsewhere was much less dramatic,” Mager said. “But a combination of severe deer pressure on native plants and invasive pests like the Ash Borer has changed it pretty rapidly.”
Today, the non-profit holds frequent volunteer and environmental education events, working with high schoolers, Eagle Scouts, and Community Action orientation groups. Multiple Princeton students have completed internships or projects with them.
Casey Burton ’24, an EEB major, interned there her sophomore summer through the High Meadows Environmental Institute.
“I had never heard of the place before,” she said of Mountain Lakes.
Over the summer, her days started early. With other student interns, she would run volunteer sessions beginning at 7 a.m. They would do manual restoration — removing invasive species by hand — until lunchtime. They would then work on their individual projects, in her case, surveying turtles or putting out insect traps to measure the preserve’s biodiversity. She found it to be a rewarding experience and appreciates how it familiarized her with the wonderful nature just a brief walk from Princeton’s campus.
“Not many people know how close it is,” Burton said. “It’s cool to have something within walking distance.”
She still attends some volunteer events on the weekends. From Princeton’s stone arches and tailored flower beds, it’s only a 20-minute walk away.
“It’s basically in your backyard,” she said.
Paige Cromley is a head Features editor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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